The Texas State Board of Education review committee is preparing to vote on a draft of proposed standards for history textbooks. Noting that the draft has "nothing about liberals," the Houston Chronicle reported:
The first draft for proposed standards in United States History Studies Since Reconstruction says students should be expected "to identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority." [...] Others have proposed adding talk show host Rush Limbaugh and the National Rifle Association.
The 15-member committee, stacked with 10 Republicans, is expected to vote along party lines. Earlier this year, a panel of right-wing "experts" produced a report urging the committee to remove biographies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Stephen F. Austin, and César Chávez, and instead add history about the "motivational role the Bible and the Christian faith played in the settling of the original colonies."
Our warming world.
As NOAA reports, July 2009 was the 5th warmest July on record since 1880 when measuring the global land and sea surface temperatures and higher than the average for the 20th century. Yet at the same time, the North American temperature was cooler than average.
And meanwhile, the thinning of the northern hemisphere's sea ice continues apace.
Just goes to show that local changes aren't necessarily the whole story. Global climate change is entrenched and we need to mitigate the worse and start planning for the next phase which is on its way.
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It ain't over till it's over, bud
So as a guy I know said the other day, we can all relax. The worst is over. The banks have been saved (he's an Obama Democrat) and housing prices are starting to make a comeback.
Uh-huh.
I've said it before: all Obama did was buy us some time before the next round of mortgage bubbles started bursting and a new crisis develops. I didn't know how much time but Deutche Bank's Karen Weaver has a pretty good idea: http://casadelogo.typepad.com/factesque/2009/08/it-aint-over-til-its-over-bud.html#more
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"I think health care is a privilege. I wouldn't call it a right." Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), quoted by the Charleston Post & Courier - who is "privileged" enough to have you and I pay for his health care.
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Hmmm. That's interesting
Turns out "Chris", the guy who brought the assault rifle to the Obama event in Arizona, is a member of the same far-right political organization as the guy who brought the gun to the Obama event in New Hampshire.
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Reich: Why are six senators in charge of health care for 300 million Americans?
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Religious people are the best people - volume 9,461
Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona [...] calls for the execution of gays in numerous sermons:
"The same God who instituted the death penalty for murders is the same god who instituted the death penalty for rapists and for homosexuals, sodomites and queers"Anderson, while he's memorized The Good Book, he is woefully underinformed about a few legal matters -- he apparently wants Barney Frank to sue his pious *ss off.
"The sodomites are recruiters and you know who they are after? Your children. They are being recruited by the sodomites. They are being molested by the sodomites. They recruit through rape, they recruit through molestation, they recruit through violation""Our country is run by faggots. You know who was the man who was the architect of the bailout? His name is Barney Frank, he is a pedophile..."
"That's who just sold our country into fascism. That's who just sold our corporations to the government. That's who sold out our country, a faggot!" [...]
"God Hates Barack Obama, I hate Barack Obama. I hate Him. God wants me to Hate Barack Obama." "Someone who commits murder should get the death penalty."
If you have the stomach for it, here's the audio.
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Those memories came flooding back and I felt a wave of nausea wash over me when I read this.
CIA interrogators used a handgun and an electric drill to try to frighten a captured al-Qaeda commander into giving up information, according to a long-concealed agency report due to be made public next week, former and current U.S. officials who have read the document said Friday.The tactics - which one official described Friday as a threatened execution - were used on Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, according to the CIA's inspector general's report on the agency's interrogation program. Nashiri, who was captured in November 2002 and held for four years in one of the CIA's "black site" prisons, ultimately became one of three al-Qaeda chieftains subjected to a form of simulated drowning known as waterboarding.
The report also says that a mock execution was staged in a room next to one terrorism suspect, according to Newsweek magazine, citing two sources for its information. The magazine was the first to publish details from the report, which it did on its Web site late Friday...
...In one instance, an interrogator showed Nashiri a gun and sought to frighten the detainee into thinking he would be shot, the sources said. In a separate encounter, a power drill was held near Nashiri's body and repeatedly turned on and off, said the officials, who spoke about the report on the condition of anonymity because it remains classified.
The federal torture statute prohibits a U.S. national from threatening anyone in his or her custody with imminent death.
Three months before Nashiri's capture, the head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel - Jay S. Bybee, now a federal judge - advised the CIA in an August 2002 memo that threats of "imminent death" were not illegal unless they deliberately produced prolonged mental harm...
A federal judge - who must be horrified at having to call Jay Bybee a peer - ordered a redacted version of the IG report be released after the ACLU sued for access to the document. Since June, lawyers for the Justice Department and the CIA have been scrutinizing the document to determine how much of it can be made public.
Christ - it's already leaked that we threatened a human being with an electric drill, and that is terrorist behavior. What the hell, pray tell, are they going to redact?
And more importantly, where is the line for those who answered the call to queue up and get back all those years spent in service? I am sure that my husband is not the only one who wants to know, because the America that he - we - agreed to stand up for didn't do shit like this. We were a refuge for people who suffered at the hands of people who did things like this, for Christ's sake!
How much more inexcusable crap many more war crimes like this are we going to be asked to overlook or let slide? At what point do those who would have us "just keep walking" and not hold anyone accountable for turning our country into a rogue state realize that they are marching away from the very things that made America an ideal, a grand experiment; and toward a place that is antithetical to the very notion of America?
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We are owed an apology
We were called traitors. We were told to leave the country. We were called every name in the book because we said that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. We were called un-American when we questioned why Osama bin Laden was allowed to escape at Tora Bora. We questioned the need for the kinds of 4th Amendment violations to which the Bush Administration was committed and we were told that only terrorists would be targeted, not Americans. And we also noticed that imminent threats seemed to always appear when George Bush was in trouble - and wrote that we thought such threats were being ginned up for political reasons. Keith Olbermann noted this in a continually-updated series:
http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2009/08/we-are-owed-apology.html
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"Heads full of chuckle"
A critical health event can happen without warning, and you might not feel comfortable leaving important decisions to an anxious, overwhelmed family member. Discussing advance directives with your doctor can give you peace of mind, knowing that your wishes will be honored.
Now we learn that Republicans don't like advance directives, though they put them into Medicare a few years ago.
A woman named Betsy McCaughey claimed that "Congress would make it mandatory...that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner."
Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and others spread this false story far and wide. There is not a word of truth in the claim, but the provision that would have paid your doctor to discuss a living will with you has been removed from the bills before the Congress. That's a loss for all of us.
You might ask yourself why the Democratic Party, which brought you Social Security and Medicare, would suddenly want to kill you. I think it would take a head full of chuckle to believe such a tale.
Perhaps if the tea party people worked a little harder on their reading comprehension we could have an intelligent and spirited debate on real health- care issues. Or they can just keep trying to shout us down.
Idaho GOP leader, Wells Fargo contractor, pulls .357 Magnum on delinquent homeowner: http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/08/idaho-gop-leader-tea-party-arrested/
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